The Memories We Keep
by NaomiMiller
Summary: Vendra Gray is plagued by memories that aren't even hers. When they threaten to break her sanity, she's sent off planet to die. Enter the Enterprise and her crew including the one man who just may be able to save her. Set after they are given the 5 year deep space mission.
1. Deep Space Distress

**A/N: Third re-write's the charm right? Changed a bit and added a whole new section to this piece. This is my first Star Trek fic. DISCLAIMER: Any thing, one, or place you may recognize belongs to Paramount Pictures and other affiliated parties. I own nothing. Enjoy!**

Captain Jim Kirk of the _USS Enterprise_ always felt a bit of smug pride whenever he was in Engineering. Here was some of the latest in designs for Starfleet engines and they were his. He was discussing engine maintenance with his Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, or "Scotty." They were just finishing when his communicator went off.

"Will that be all Scotty?" he asked with an inquiring look at his engineer.

"Aye Captain, I believe we're finished. I'll get started on these right away," Scotty replied, moving off a ways to confer with one of his crewmembers.

Kirk plucked his communicator off his belt and gave it a long look. The thing never gave him a moment's some days. Although, if it meant getting to captain the _Enterprise_ and her crew, his own personal peace and quiet was a price he was willing to pay. He flipped it open.

"Kirk."

Lieutenant Nyota Uhura, his communications officer and language expert was on the other end. "Captain, I'm receiving a distress call from a location about 50 clicks to our northeast." There was a pause before she added, "We can't identify what it is."

Kirk gave the communicator in his hand a puzzled look. A distress call in deep space where they were literally in the middle of freaking nowhere? The nearest planet was a good 800 clicks away or so. He didn't know of any other Starfleet ships or other registered vessels that might be in the area.

"Are there any other vessels in the area Lieutenant?"

"None so far as I can tell sir. It appears to be just us out here."

"Alright, inform Mr. Sulu to set course for the last location of the distress call and try to make contact with the craft. I'm on my up to the bridge."

"Yes Captain."

Kirk closed the communicator and looked for Scotty, spotting him by one of the main engine control panels.

"Scotty!" The engineer looked up.

"I'm afraid the maintenance is going to have to wait. We just got a distress call and I need you in the shuttle bay pronto."

"Aye sir." Scotty saluted him and headed off, but not before Kirk caught the muttered curses the engineer was sputtering. He just shook his head at the man and headed for the bridge.

* * *

Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy squinted in concentration at the hand sitting on the table in front of him in the sick bay. The hand belonged to the red headed young woman sitting across from him look anywhere but where he was flushing out a gash she had given herself on a particularly sharp bolt in Engineering. To her credit though she hadn't offered to throw up on him or faint even though she was pale as a sheet and a little green around the edges. Her hand remained steady on the table.

He was applying a topical antibiotic to the wound when Jim's voice came on over the sickbay speaker system.

"Bones, you there?"

"I'm a little busy Jim," he growled at his friend. He set aside the antibiotic and picked up the sealant to close the laceration.

"When are you ever not busy Bones?"

"When I'm dead," he muttered, eliciting a small smile from his patient.

"I'm afraid this can't wait. We just intercepted a distress call and I need you to prep the sickbay and your team to receive any survivors we may pick up."

"Any idea what we're looking at?" He carefully pinched the skin closed so that it lined up evenly. He picked up the skin sealant gel and placed a thin line along the edges of the wound. He listened to Jim's information as he held it shut for a minute to let the sealant dry so that the wound wouldn't reopen.

"I'm as clueless as you are. We'll know more once we're on scene, which should be in about twenty minutes." Jim signed off.

"Excellent."

He let go of the newly sealed skin and picked up a waterproof bandage, wrapping it around the woman's hand once. "Alright, you're good to go. No using that hand for the next couple of days. Keep the area dry and clean as the sealant can wash off when exposed to enough water. Let the sealant work its magic and you should be good as new in a couple of days. If you have any problems come back and see me," he instructed.

"Thanks Doctor." She left to return to her station. He turned to find most of his staff going about their usual business. He rolled his eyes. Some days it seemed like a small miracle that anything ever got done around here.

"Alright people let's go. We've got a damn distress call in less than twenty minutes to prep for. Let's move it!"

* * *

She had no idea how long she'd been trapped in the small spacecraft. There were no windows and even if there had been it wouldn't have helped since she was adrift in space. There no sun cycles to help her keep track of the passing days.

She didn't know where she was in space. She didn't know what she had done to deserve the life she had been given and now this. She barely even knew who she was anymore. There were just the memories.

Memories upon memories upon memories jostled and brawled for a moment of her attention. It was impossible to focus on any single one. As soon as she did, it slipped away to join the others swirling around and around in her head.

A majority of the memories weren't even hers. She wasn't even capable of making her own memories anymore. There were so many others crowding her mind there wasn't any room left for them. She was starting to lose her grip on reality, being pushed towards her breaking point. It happened to everyone eventually.

She was on her side curled in a ball on the floor of the only compartment on the craft. Her knees were tucked tightly to her chest and her narrow fingers were tangled in her dark brunette hair, covering her ears. Her eyes were squeezed shut, trying to shut out the memories, but you can't escape something that's in your head.

Her right ankle was chained to the wall and the shackle bit painfully into her skin from where she had struggled against it at first. She tried to focus on that pain now. It served as her anchor to the current world to keep her from going completely insane. There was no food or water on board. She was aware of one thing through the haze in her mind. This was not a prison or form of punishment. Her people had abandoned her. This was her coffin, but she wasn't ready to die yet.

* * *

Leonard looked at the stranded vessel though the wide view window that spanned the width of the bridge. The ship was slightly smaller than the average escape pod and was almost perfectly spherical in shape. The outside was the color of burnished copper and covered in an intricate maze of grooves. There were no windows that he could see.

"It appears to be simply drifting," Kirk muttered from the captain's chair. "I can't see any outward signs of an engine or other kind of propulsion system."

"Maybe that's why they sent out the distress signal?" Leonard suggested.

Jim shrugged and pressed a button on the arm of his chair. "Scotty, is the retrieval party ready to depart?"

Before leaving the space port at Earth, the _Enterprise_ had been equipped with a specially designed 2-man Rescue & Recovery shutted for collecting such things as artifacts, escape pods, and such why they are on their journey. They had made the decision to use the shuttle in this case after earlier examination of the mysterious craft had revealed that there was no easily accessible door or hatch to dock with using one of their other rescue shuttles. Since the craft was small enough, they decided to bring the whole thing on board.

"Aye sir they are. Shall I send them on their merry way?"

"If you will please Scotty."

There was a brief pause before Scotty came back on. "Shuttle departing now Captain."

"Thanks Scotty."

Leonard watched as a few minutes later the R&R shuttle floated into view and headed to retrieve the stranded craft.

Kirk stood and stretched. "Let's go down to the shuttle bay bones and see what we're dealing with. Uhura, Spock, you guys come to. Your skills may come in handy. Mr. Sulu you have the con." Ensign Hikaru Sulu nodded. "Aye Captain."

Leonard followed the others into the lift with a feeling that things were about to change. He couldn't tell if it was for better or worse. He decided that with his luck it would probably be for the worse. He really hated space some days.

Half an hour later he watched through one of the shuttle bay's plate-glass windows as the rescue shuttle maneuvered the stranded ship into place. Once both vessels had been secured in place, the mammoth bay doors at the opposite end were closed and the strange craft settled onto the floor as gravity reasserted itself.

"Fascinating, I've never seen a ship quite like it," Spock said as everyone converged on the craft. Already, crewmembers were putting chocks in place against the sides to stabilize it and keep it from rolling like it was trying to do.

"Not even from something you may have learned on Vulcan?" Uhura asked him.

He shook his head, "Not even from my time there."

"What about you Scotty?" Kirk asked the engineer as the man joined them. "Have you seen anything like it?"

"Can't say that I have Captain. I saw some concept sketches for something similar in engineering school, but nothing ever came of it that I'm aware of." He ran a portable scanner over the copper-colored exterior as he walked around it.

"I'm not detecting any kind of propulsion system on it and there's what looks to be a very basic life support system on it, designed to last only a few days at most depending on who's using it."

Leonard had been half-listening to the conversation. He didn't really care much about the outside of the ship; he was more interested in who—or what—might be inside. Now he took over the conversation.

"Then we need to get this thing open right now and help whoever, or whatever, may be inside." He turned to Scotty. "How do we open this thing?"

Scotty shrugged. "I haven't the foggiest. Let's find out shall we?" He set aside his monitoring equipment and together they examined every inch of the exterior for a clue as to how to get in.

He found it first with his fingers that were finely-tuned to finding anomalies after years of medical practice. Amongst the many knots and grooves, his hands brushed over something that felt like a handle. Upon close inspection it was found to be a disk sunk into the metal with a bar that spanned about a hand width across it.

"I think I found it," he announced. He grabbed the bar and turned it clockwise. With a slight metallic groan, it turned half a revolution before it stopped.

By now everyone else had gathered around him. He leaned back and pulled the handle up. The disk rose out of the exterior, resulting in an airy hiss as the concealed door opened. The light beyond the door was just bright enough to escape being called dim, but visibility was still abysmal.

"Anyone got a flashlight?" he asked over his shoulder.

"Here you go." Scotty handed him the one that he kept on his belt.

"Thanks."

Just before he was about to climb in, Jim stopped him with a hand on his shoulder.

"Hang on Bones, let me go in first. We don't know what may be in there."

"If you insist, be my guest," he told his friend, handing him the flashlight. It wouldn't help anyone if the Chief Medical Officer on board was injured or killed.

Jim took the flashlight from him and clambered inside, stooping through the low-ceilinged, short entry tunnel. A muffled curse was spat out as Jim knocked his head against the ceiling.

Leonard could see the brief flashes of light through the door as Jim looked around inside. He could also feel the curiosity radiating off of the others surrounding the ship. Even he was curious about what might be inside.

"Bones, you better get in here!" Jim called after a couple of minutes. He grabbed the edge of the door and hauled himself up, mindful of the ceiling as he stood up. Three quick strides had him in the dome-shaped main compartment of the craft. As far as he could tell, it was the only compartment.

That's not what commanded his attention though. The beam of the flashlight fell over the form of what appeared to be a young woman. She was curled up on her side in the fetal position. Her hands were clapped over her ears and her eyes were squeezed shut. The only indication that she was still alive were the violent tremors that shook her body and the shallow, rapid breaths she was taking.

"Look at her ankle." Jim's voice broke through his mental evaluation. His eyes moved across the figure on the floor until he found what had caught his friend's attention. A brief flash of anger at some unknown entity coursed through him as he realized what he was looking at. A cruel manacle with a heavy chain had been snapped tight around her right ankle. It had rubbed the skin raw and opened painful looking sores in a few places.

A thousand questions ran through his mind. Where had she come from? What was she doing on this ship? Why was she chained? She didn't appear to be dangerous. If anything, she appeared to be terrified, but of what?

He knelt next to the woman and laid a hand gently on her shoulder. She was trembling so much that the whole lower half of his arm shook. She didn't seem to feel his touch.

"Miss? Hello? Can you hear me?" he inquired. He tried shaking her to get her attention, but she was still unresponsive. He tried a few more times with the same result. He leaned back for a moment and looked her over, reassessing.

"You might want to be ready to jump in just in case," he warned Jim. Before the other man could ask why, Leonard reached down and pried her hands away from her ears and held them in his hands. As if some switch had been flipped, her eyes flew open and she probably would have tried to get away if he hadn't grabbed her. Her eyes darted around the room, looking for an escape as she struggled against his hold.

He could tell she was far from rational at the moment, still trapped in her fear. She reminded him of some of the more skittish horses they'd had on the farm in Georgia where he'd grown up. He decided to use the same approach he had used on them to tray and calm her down.

"Easy, easy. No one's here to hurt you. You're safe," he told her in a calm, steady voice as he held fast to her hands.

"You're alright. You're on a Starfleet vessel. No one's going to harm you. You can relax. We're here to help you."

As he talked he could see her start to calm down a bit as his words penetrated through her veil of terror. He didn't know if she understood anything he was saying, but he kept on talking seeing that it was having some effect.

At last she quit struggling. She was still trembling though. Her eyes quit darting around and she fixed him with a pair of the darkest blue eyes he had ever seen. The corners were strangely tilted down at the edges. They were framed in thick, dark, lashes.

She spoke one word. "Safe?"

He nodded. "Yes, safe.

She sighed before suddenly collapsing. He caught her before she hit the floor.

**A/N: As always I would love to know what you think. Love it? Hate it? Whatever? Leave a message after this note. ~Naomi**


	2. More Questions Than Answers

**A/N: Hooray, another chapter! Like the title it may leave you with more questions than answers. Sorry. Things will be explained in time I promise. Also, if you have already been following this story, make sure to go back and read the first chapter as I added a large chunk at the end and changed some other things. If you don't the start of this chapter may not make much sense. DISCLAIMER: Any thing, one, or place you may recognize belongs to to Paramount Pictures and other affiliated parties. Enjoy!**

For once it was blessedly quiet in the dark. The racket inside her head had fallen silent. It was the first time in years that she was able to hear herself think. She floated through the peaceful darkness in bliss, falling back into the abyss of a dreamless sleep.

An unfamiliar beeping noise sounded in her ears an unknown amount of time later, intruding into her quiet sanctuary. She tried to ignore it, but the noise slowly dragged her back into reality as she surfaced from her sleep. She opened her eyes to an unfamiliar white ceiling. She was lying on something soft that was elevated off of the floor. Her hands and fingers explored the item and confirmed that it was a real mattress. No wonder it felt so foreign to her. She had never slept in a real bed before.

Her brain was still a little sleep-fogged as she tried to make sense of her surroundings. This wasn't on Narend, of that much she was certain. No one let her have a real bed there. If she wasn't on Narend, then where was she?

She turned her head to the side, looking for the source of the beeping sound that had woken her up. It appeared to be coming from a strange, square machine that displayed mysterious figures and rows of numbers on it. She followed their path and was alarmed to see that some of them were attached to her, even in her under the skin. She attempted to scrabble backward to get away from them but only succeeded in getting them tangled around everything.

"Good, you're awake." She froze at the distinctly male voice. She turned her head to see a man in a blue shirt and black trousers rising from a desk in the middle of the room. She looked around the room and realized that there were multiple beds in here, separated by curtains. All of them except hers were completely empty.

The man approached the bed she was occupying. She watched him with wary eyes, unsure of what might happen. There was something familiar about his face though, and his voice. For once she had to search for a memory, but once one came, they all came flooding after it. It wasn't as fierce as before, but after the quiet she had just experienced it was a little overwhelming.

She remembered vaguely that she had finally broken under the weight of her Keeper's memories and she knew that she had been sent off planet to die. She didn't need to have a memory for that part. Everyone knew that's what happened to Vessels once they reached the end of their usefulness.

She looked at the man standing at the foot of the bed. She had a faint remembered feeling of calm and safety when she looked at his face. He was certainly not from Narend then. Her memory bank provided her with dozens of images to reference in figuring out where he was from. He was human and the language he had just spoken was English. Sometimes, very rarely, having a headful of unwanted memories that weren't yours could be helpful.

"You're on the _USS Enterprise_, a Starfleet ship. I'm Doctor McCoy, the Chief Medical Officer," the man, Dr. McCoy, informed her. He had a strange accent to his voice. Her memory couldn't place it specifically; it just told her that he was from some country called the United States on his home planet of Earth. The memories of Earth that she possessed were some of the more far-reaching ones that she had. Humans had particularly fascinated her back when she could still control the memories.

She tried out one word in English, the language feeling awkward and cumbersome on her tongue. "Starfleet?"

He looked confused for a minute before comprehension dawned on his face. "Even after being out here for a year and a half I still forget not everyone knows what Starfleet is." He leaned forward and braced his hands on the foot of the bed. "It's essentially a group of people from all sorts of different places and backgrounds and our mission is to explore space, the final frontier as they call it."

She thought that sounded like something that she would love to do, to be able to see some of the places in her head for herself. As if sensing her thoughts thousands of memories came surging forward, showing her places she had never been but had vivid memories of. She closed her eyes and tried to shove them away. They retreated, but just barely. She could sense them hovering just on the edge of her control.

"How're you feeling?"

She opened her eyes to find the doctor looking at her with keen green-brown eyes. How could she explain what was going on to someone who had no idea?

"How long have I been here?" she asked him, skipping around her problem entirely. It still felt foreign to use this new language, but her memory was helping her with the words and how to say them.

"You've been on board the _Enterprise_ for four days," Dr. McCoy told her as he crossed to the strange square machine and examined the display.

Four days! She had been asleep for four days?

As if sensing her thoughts, he elaborated. "When we found you, you were severely malnourished and dehydrated and appeared to be trapped in some kind of trance-like state. You reached your body's overall stress maximum and your brain just shut everything down to protect it. I kept you unconscious in what we call a medically induced coma for the last two and a half days until your body regulated itself back to what I assume are normal conditions and we got some nutrients and fluids back into your system." He paused here then added, "by the way do you have a name?"

She thought about that for a moment. She had to sift back through the tidal wave of memories to some of her earliest memories that were actually her own before she became a Vessel. She knew she had a name, but her Keeper had only ever called her "Girl." She finally found it.

"Vendra. Vendra Gray."

He gave her a smile. "Nice to meet you Vendra. Since it's still pretty early in the morning and everyone's still asleep, I suggest you get some more rest before the Captain learns you're awake. He loves learning about new places and people in space, as does our First Officer. You'll need all the energy you can get."

Vendra still wasn't used to people being this nice to her. She was the bottom of the social hierarchy on Narend. The only ones lower than her were the ones with no potential or abilities at all. As she tried to sort things out she reached up for the pendant that hung around her neck constantly. It was her way of anchoring herself to the present and separating what was real and what wasn't. Only it wasn't there. It was then that she realized she didn't have any of her belongings with her.

"Where-" she looked for the right words. "Where are my things?" The beeping from the strange machine increased in pace as her heart sped up in the beginning stages of panic. She fought to control it, but it was too late. The barely suppressed memories surged forward, crashing over her and threatening to drown her.

She struggled to breathe. The doctor disappeared from her side only to return a minute later, holding some kind of container in his hands. He set it aside and took hold of her shoulders, pressing her gently but firmly to the mattress.

"Vendra-hey, look at me. At me. It's okay, I have your things right here," he told her indicating the container. "They're right here. I need you calm down for me first, okay?"

She fought through the haze of memories and focused on his voice and it's steady cadence. It carried a strange calming influence and she grabbed on to it and slowly began to retake control. Her heart rate slowed down and her breathing evened out. The memories still swirled and dashed through her mind, but she was anchored enough in the present to sort of hold them at bay.

Once he was certain that she was calm, Dr. McCoy released her shoulders and set the container next to her on the bed. It was a long and narrow, semi-transparent box. She could make out the familiar shapes of her few belongings inside.

"Here let's make you a little more comfortable," he said. He leaned down and pushed a button on the side of the bed. She felt the upper part of the bed begin to move until she was in a partially upright position. Vendra was amazed. Not only was she in a real bed, but it also moved.

Once the bed was adjusted, Dr. McCoy straightened. "I'll let you look through your things in peace. If you need anything, I'll be over there." He indicated the desk where he had been sitting earlier.

She nodded absentmindedly, already dragging the box into her lap. He walked away as she pulled the lid off.

Inside were the five things in the whole universe that she could claim as her own. On top was her sleeveless, dark green tunic with the embroidered neck line. Next was the pair of brown trousers that were normally tucked into the pair of well-worn animal skin boots with their soft, felt soles. She picked up the heavy chain belt that she normally wore, each link reminding her of the weight on her mind. Finally her fingers found what she had been looking for.

The white stone pendant hung on a string of black leather that wrapped around the tail of the big cat the pendant was carved into. It was a Sun Cat, one of the animals native to the Narendian plains. While the stone was white, the cats were tawny gold in color with a black muzzle, paws, and ears, a white mane, and eyes the color of a deep, natural spring. The pendant was the only thing she had to connect her to her family she had never met. She ran her fingers over the pendant's smooth surface. The familiar action helped calm her mind and remind her of the only home she knew, such as it was. She continued to run her fingers across it until she eventually fell asleep.

* * *

Leonard had been keeping a close eye on their guest since her unusual arrival on board. Her body had been on its way to complete shutdown when they had carried her into the sick bay. He and his team had eventually gotten enough medicine, nutrients, and fluids in her system to stabilize her physically. Mentally her system was still in overdrive. He made the decision to keep her in a temporary coma to see if he could help her take some of the stress off.

He had pulled her off the sedative yesterday afternoon once all of her vital signs and readings had evened out as far as he could ascertain. It took her another day and a half to wake up.

He had been having another sleepless night and decided and he would go check on his patient in the sick bay and get some of the more mundane paperwork and reports out of the way. He had probably been there for an hour or so when she finally regained consciousness.

Once she was awake he had explained to her where she was and what had happened. After she got over her initial fear and confusion she had been surprisingly calm about it all, at least until she realized her belongings were missing. Not wanting her to get too upset again, he had immediately brought her things to her before leaving her in peace to rest and sort through things.

Now he sat at his desk, watching her pick through her belongings. _Vendra_, he had to remind himself. _Her name is Vendra Gray_. Certainly a unique name he mused to himself.

As he sat there, Leonard wondered what her story was. From what he had gathered over the past few days, he guessed it probably wasn't a happy one. She was plagued by some terror or the other and he sense that she was at her breaking point and if they didn't help her, she may shatter beyond repair. He wasn't going to let that happen if he could help it.

* * *

Leonard wasn't the only one up in the bleary hours of the morning. Jim was also awake and doing some research on the _Enterprise's_ visitor. For the past three nights since she had arrived, he and Spock had been searching through Starfleet's extensive databases for any mention of either a ship or a species that matched what they had found. So far they had both come up empty.

It was three in the morning when he finally came across a mention of someone who resembled the girl. A Starfleet crew stationed out on the Frontier had encountered two people who had resembled the girl with their sharply arched eyebrows, eyes that slanted down at the corners, ears that were pointed at both ends, and elegant, fine-boned features.

When asked, they had identified themselves as Memory Keepers from the planet of Narend.

"Memory Keepers?" Jim muttered to himself. He continued reading the document, but there was little more information offered. No one knew where their home planet was or what exactly it was that they did other than work with memories. The best one crewmember could describe them as was "memory doctors."

Intrigued, Kirk saved the document to his PADD to show the others later and searched for another hour or so to see if he could find any other mention of these Memory Keepers. He came up empty again. Whoever these Memory Keepers were, they were an enigmatic bunch.

He set his PADD back on his desk charger and sat back in his chair, dragging his hands over his face as he yawned. It was time to retire for the night. Maybe the morning would hold more answers.

**A/N: As always I would love to know what you think. Love it? Hate it? Leave a message after this note~Naomi**


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